The Philosopher's Pupil

by Iris Murdoch

  ‘No, no don’t send me away, let me stay please, let me try again, I really am as you thought me, I’m not like George — ’

  ‘Go now and right away, at once.’

  ‘Please, please— ’

  ‘Go away, go away!’

  The philosopher turned upon Tom a face of anguish, his eyes and brow screwed up, his wet lips opening revealing the red interior of his mouth, as for a great cry of woe. Tom escaped to the door and out of the house.

  There’s a head up there in the ginkgo tree, thought Alex. A head with long golden hair perched high up in the branches. Alex looked at it with her heart beating fast. It was twilight on Wednesday evening. She thought, it’s something to do with them, those wicked ill-omened girls. It’s some kind of vile filthy ghost thing. Adolescent girls attract ghosts.

  She walked back toward the house and edged round the corner of the garage beside the dustbins, seeing the top of the Rolls-Royce through the garage window, and feeling another pang of fright and pain. On the evening of the ‘riot’ Alex had secured all the doors and gone to bed drunk leaving Ruby locked outside in the garden. Ruby had spent the night in the Rolls. Alex felt disgust at the idea of Ruby’s big sweaty body curled up inside the car. She thought, I’ll sell it, it’s spoilt now.

  Earlier Alex had again seen the pretty vixen reclining while four fluffy milk-chocolate brown cubs with light blue eyes and stubby tails played tig on the lawn. This sight now seemed uncanny too, an accidental slit into another world, weird, beautiful, dangerous, coming nearer. The blue-tits at her bedroom window wore demonic masks. And places where she might have run for help, George, Rozanov, were the most haunted of all.

  Alex looked past the dustbins along the side of the house toward the road where the lights had not yet come on. If she screwed her eyes up a bit she could see quite clearly in the faintly fuzzy blue light. No one was there. Then a sudden movement nearer to her made her startle and step back. Something had appeared just beyond the farthest of the three dustbins. It was the dog fox, who stood looking at her with his darkly lined sorrowful fierce face. Alex instinctively raised her hand in a dismissive gesture; but the fox did not flinch. Withdrawing his attention from Alex, he began sniffing about at the base of the bin. Then he stood up on his hind legs and thrust his nose and his front paws under the top of the bin. Alex felt frightened and angry at the fox’s indifference to her presence. She said, finding it strangely difficult to speak to the fox, ‘Stop that!’ She did not shout, but spoke quite softly; and she knocked her fists, feebly and almost inaudibly, upon the lid of the bin nearest to her. The fox descended to all fours, evidently eating something, and then, without even looking at Alex, stood up again to resume his investigation. Alex drew back. Then she moved forward again and, picking up the lid upon which she had tapped, threw it in the direction of the fox where it skidded on the concrete and went bowling past him like a hoop. The fox leapt but did not run away. He ran in fact directly toward Alex, round her, and back again to the garage wall where he proceeded with a violent blow from his front paws to overturn one of the bins completely. He began scrabbling among the rubbish. Alex, suddenly mad, ran to the further bin and knocked the lid off and began pelting the fox with the contents. At the same time she cried out, loudly this time, ‘Oh, stop, stop, go away!’ The fox, his black paws deep in the mess, regarded her, and then uttered a sound. It was not exactly a bark, it was a deep resonant shrieking noise. As Alex now rushed towards him he darted across her feet (his fur brushed her dress) and in through the open door of the garage. As with almost superstitious terror she peered in through the doorway, she could dimly see the fox sitting up in the front seat of the Rolls.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ruby, coming round the corner from the house.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s this stuff here?’

  ‘Nothing. Leave it .’

  Leaving the garage door open, Alex followed Ruby back into the house. The strange head up in the tree seemed to be glowing in the intense twilight.

  George had been sincere in attributing to John Robert a lack of vanity and a lofty indifference to ‘what people say’. His view was however incorrect. Tom had been nearer the mark, and dangerously so, in what he had blurted out about ‘self-esteem’. John Robert was an arrogant independent eccentric, careless of convention and devoid of mean worldly aims. He blundered uncalculatingly through life ready, in pursuit of his own goals and principles, to face men’s indifference, incomprehension and dislike. He said what he thought and cared nothing for society. In a totalitarian state he might well have been in prison. He was nevertheless vulnerable to ridicule, and to the mockery of spiteful misunderstanding. Moreover in this case he was helpless. He could not rush forth to confound his lying tormentors. Any such sortie would merely attract more publicity and more malicious laughter. His dignity was a part of his self-respect, and he felt wounded in his strength. He was not only tortured by the articles in the Ennistone papers, he was for a time defeated by them, made confused, almost ashamed. He wanted to ‘hide’, and indeed for two days he did not leave the house. He was well aware that his misfortunes must be a prime topic of gleeful conversation in the town. By the Thursday after the ‘riot’ the national papers had taken note of the matter, understanding it for some reason as a student protest against some aspect of Rozanov’s philosophy. Two reporters actually rang his bell and a photographer took a picture of the front door. A German newspaper (Rozanov was well-known in Germany) printed a light-hearted version of the tale, based on the Ennistone accounts, and a scurrilous German periodical pursued various inferences some entirely new, and published a picture of Hattie which they had somehow procured. (A ‘well wisher’ sent this magazine to John Robert together with a letter deploring the publication of such disgraceful stuff.) It was fortunate for the philosopher that, in his unworldliness he failed, for all his anguish, to imagine how inventively malicious the stories were which were circulating in Ennistone. Not that anybody harboured any deep resentment against him. They regarded him rather in an affectionate light as a mascot. But ‘how are the mighty fallen’ is always a theme for rejoicing, the McCaffreys were always news, and Hattie, regarded as ‘a little snob’, was fair game.

  One of the more universal aspects of human wickedness is the willingness of almost everyone to indulge in spiteful gossip. Even the ‘nicest people’, such as Miss Dunbury, and Mrs Osmore, and Dominic Wiggins, and May Blackett were in general prepared to smile at nastiness and even sometimes to repeat it. Someone who was never idly gossiped to because of his virtuous austerity was William Eastcote; but in this respect as in others he was exceptional. Ennistone gossip was fairly certain about some matters, deliciously uncertain about others, and in general far from consistent. It was agreed that the old man wanted to ‘get rid of’ his grandchild and had offered her ‘like a pet calf’ to Tom McCaffrey. Whether this was also a ‘a shot-gun situation’ remained unclear, but as people smilingly observed, ‘time would show’. (This scandal spread a lot of happiness around in Ennistone, and on a utilitarian argument could thus be justified.) Some held that Tom had passed Hattie on to George, others that George, out of spite against Tom, had ‘carried her off’. Hattie was agreed to be ‘fearfully stuck up’, but had her defenders who regarded her as ‘a helpless victim of scheming men’, and her critics who were prepared to go to almost any lengths in regarding her as, according to their own moral tastes, ‘emancipated’ or ‘corrupt’. In some versions Diane and even Mrs Belton played prime roles and the Slipper House was represented (on view already traditional in Ennistone) as an abode of sin. The notion that George had made Hattie pregnant and Tom, in the goodness of his heart, was to marry her was a further sophistication of the tale which hardly anyone believed but almost everyone repeated.

  For all of Wednesday and most of Thursday John Robert remained barricaded in his house, not answering the door-bell. He sat and struggled with his colossal hurt pride and with his anger, anger against Tom, against George, and aga
inst fate, which somehow included the two girls. He grieved over his Ennistone, his childhood home, his sacred place in which he had had faith, now spoilt and blackened and made forever uninhabitable. And over there, at the Slipper House which he had been so childishly pleased to give to Hattie, all was suspect, besmirched, irrevocably ruined; so much so as even to make him reluctant to find out ‘what had really happened’. He had not questioned Tom carefully, partly because he was so extremely angry and partly because he had made up his mind early on that Tom would tell any lie to protect himself. His rage against Tom was intensified by the knowledge that his own perfectly asinine policies had introduced the boy into the scene in the first place. His anger against George, and his conviction that George was the real villain, was from an older and deeper source. John Robert had received George’s long letter at the Institute on Tuesday morning and had already tossed it unopened into the waste-paper basket before he looked at the Gazette. After he had seen the articles he retrieved the letter and tore it up unread into small pieces. All this time, as he remembered and reflected, the philosopher sat quiet, motionless, in the upstairs room where he had been conceived and born, upon the iron bedstead, moved from the next-door room, upon which he had slept as a child. He did not dare to sit downstairs for fear someone might look at him through the window. Throughout Wednesday, after Tom’s departure, and for most of Thursday he sat and digested and regurgitated his rage. He knew the girls would do nothing till he came. It did not occur to him that it was cruel to keep them waiting.

  Hurt vanity automatically brings with it the resentment that demands revenge: to reassert one’s value by passing on the hurt. ‘I am not to be trifled with. Someone will suffer for this.’ Certainly John Robert wanted to run to the Ennistone Gazette office, drag the editor into the street and kick his ribs in; this was abstract compared with what he felt about the two McCaffreys. Wild ideas of punishing Tom (thrashing him or ruining his university career, or ‘dragging him through the law courts’) soon faded, however. There was nothing he could do to Tom. Equally, and indeed all the more so as it appeared on reflection, there was nothing he could do to George. Of course he could go round to Drudsdale and smash his fist into George’s face. But if he were to run at George like a mad dog and savage him and break up his house, would this not be doing exactly what George wanted? George had been attempting for years to attract John Robert’s attention, to provoke a ‘happening’ which would establish a ‘bond’ between them. George had wanted to occupy John Robert’s mind; he had been, as the philosopher was vaguely aware, hurt and maddened by John Robert’s calm coldness, by the evident fact that John Robert not only did not care about him, but did not think about him. This policy, which was effected without effort, was not totally uncoloured by malice. The tiny corner of John Robert’s mind which was aware of George had experienced a fleeting satisfaction as he had thrown away George’s unopened letter and completely forgotten George in the next moment: a serene oblivion which had unfortunately not lasted long. But now - it appeared that George had won. John Robert was now as obsessed with George as George was with John Robert. The fatal connection, now running through Hattie, had tied them together at last.

  John Robert did not, when he was able to think, doubt that the loathsome unread letter had contained impertinences about the girl. (Herein he displayed his lack of understanding of George’s character.) He pictured the bland round face, the boyish short-square-toothed smile. He conceived of writing to George. But could any words that existed express what he wanted to say? Now at last, when he had made out just what a victory his enemy had won, he felt that nothing would serve, nothing would do except to kill George. Nothing else at all ever would make the world right again.

  While John Robert Rozanov was sitting on his bed at 16 Hare Lane, Tom McCaffrey was sitting on his at Travancore Avenue. Like John Robert, Tom was imprisoned, tortured and paralysed. He could not leave Ennistone, that was impossible. He wrote a letter to his tutor saying that he was ill. He was in fact ill, he had a feverish cold. (He thought, that’s Bobbie Benning’s cold. I shouldn’t have put on his bear’s head. I could feel it was all damp and noisome inside.) He was also, he felt, well on the way to becoming mentally ill. It was Tom’s first experience of demons. Demons, like viruses, live in every human organism, but in some happy lives never become active. Tom was now aware of the demons and that they were his demons. He stayed on in Ennistone because he could not leave behind the problems which could only be solved here, even though it was also impossible to solve them. He stayed secretly because he took John Robert’s threats seriously. Tom could not imagine how John Robert could ‘do him harm’ but he was taking no chances. He had never before been at the receiving end of vindictive hatred, and he was very shaken by it. He did not doubt John Robert’s strong active ill-will. So, although he stayed in Ennistone, he did not, for the rest of Wednesday and most of Thursday, set foot outside, and when darkness fell he pulled the heavily lined curtains carefully and turned on, at the back of the house, one well-shaded lamp. On Wednesday night he went to bed early and dreamt about Fiona Gates. (He had been hurt by John Robert’s sneer at his mother.) In the dream Fiona appeared as a ghost with long trailing hair, wearing a white shift or petticoat. She seemed to be unable to speak, but held out her hands to him in a piteous gesture as if begging him for help. He thought, she’s so young, so young. He woke in distress just after midnight and lay upon his bed tossing and turning in paroxysms of misery and remorse and resentment and fear.

  The resentment, almost amounting to rage, was the most demonic constituent of Tom’s spiritual illness. It was so unusual, so unnatural, for him to feel even ‘cross’ with anybody. Now he felt angry with John Robert, with Hattie, with George, with Emma, with himself. He puzzled and puzzled over how on earth John Robert’s ‘plan’ for him and Hattie could have become general knowledge. It was inconceivable that Hattie had talked about it. He was himself to blame for having told Emma. But he had told no one else. Emma, although he denied it, must have told somebody. Perhaps he had told Hector with whom he had become (Tom felt jealous about this) rather friendly. A letter to Tom from Hector had arrived at Travancore Avenue on Tuesday morning asking him, when he was back in Ennistone, to get in touch with Hector at once. Tom ignored the letter, but later wondered if that were the reason for it. Emma had told Hector and Hector had talked. Hector was acquainted with the Ennistone Gazette man, Gavin Oare, and had given him an interview about the play … Tom wondered if he should go and see Hector, but the idea of clarification was in itself appalling; and the idea that Emma had lied to him and betrayed him was sickeningly painful.

  The chief traitor was of course himself. He ought never to have agreed to John Robert’s crazy idea. He did so, not even for a lark, but because he was profoundly flattered. Having agreed, he ought to have kept his mouth shut. And having almost at once realized that it was ‘no go’, he ought to have written to John Robert to say so and have got himself out of the whole awful mess. He ought to have stayed in London and got on with his work (how attractive the decent idea of getting on with his work seemed to him now) instead of hanging around Ennistone having ambiguous adventures. In these thoughts, Tom vacillated to and fro, between seeing himself as guilty of the most disgraceful treachery, and seeing himself as the helpless victim of a monster. Who could deal with a man like Rozanov? Rozanov had trapped him into this ghastly and ridiculous business, and was now blaming him unjustly without even listening to an explanation. The scene at the Slipper House had not been Tom’s fault, only Rozanov had been determined to see it as some sort of conspiracy. And Rozanov had dared to threaten Tom, to revile him and hate him. How could that be?

  Upon the figure of Hattie an even more ambiguous and intense light was falling. What exactly had happened that night? At first, and under his guilty hat, Tom had assumed that Hattie was simply an innocent girl, affronted by what must have seemed to her (though it was really an accident) a thoughtless and cruel jape, and then by George’s i
ntolerable intrusion. In this mood Tom felt very painful remorse: why on earth had he ever invented that ‘party at the Slipper House’, why had he actually led all those drunken people thither? It really seemed like a contrivance of the devil: a fateful devil lurking in the unconscious darkness of his own mind. And he wanted very much to run to Hattie and explain and apologize and be forgiven. Then, as resentment filled up the scale again on the other side, he began to wonder: why had George suddenly turned up like that? Was Diane Sedleigh involved? He had seen her in the garden. Why was she there? He recalled now having heard that Pearl was related to Ruby who was related to Diane. Was Ruby involved? And Pearl? And … Hattie …? Was Hattie an innocent maiden affronted by vulgar jesters? Had Diane brought George to Hattie? Had Hattie herself invited George? Had she for some time known George, and was this the reason why she had been so offensively cold to Tom? With this hellish brew bubbling in his mind Tom tried to go to sleep again on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning he telephoned the Slipper House. Someone, he thought it was Pearl, said ‘Yes?’, and after he had said ‘It’s Tom,’ put the phone down.

  Tom had not seriously thought of attempting to see Hattie on Wednesday because in another part of his crazed mind he felt that he had indeed promised John Robert not to; and in any case he was afraid of John Robert finding out, he was afraid of John Robert’s reprisals. On Thursday he was a good deal less sure that he had promised anything and a little less afraid. After the telephone call he wanted very much to run round to the Slipper House, but he did not dare to. Suppose he were to meet John Robert there? But he went on wanting to go. He wanted more and more, more than anything in the world, to see Hattie, to explain that he was innocent, and to know by looking at her clear pale face that she was.